Transcript: How You Doin’? Vol 9: Aaron Luo, Co-Founder of Caraa

NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses and openings in New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney, Hal Coopersmith. And in this episode, Aaron Luo co-founder of Caraa returns to the New York Launch Pod to discuss his handbag company made specifically for the modern woman. Since we last spoke, Caraa has been successfully adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic and has developed a number of new products while staying active on social issues. Here’s Aaron:

Aaron Luo: We’re getting customers for the mask. I think for us, in terms of the bags to answer your question directly, I think we purposely started to promote products somewhat more relevant to the pandemic. So yes, people are not going to the office, but they’re still taking walks, right? For example, like hiking and walking and outdoor sport was still very much a thing, especially last summer and fall.

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NY Launch Pod : So you have been a successful bag company, the pandemic hits and you decide to pivot to masks. What was that like?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, it’s a good question and something that’s being asked quite a bit cause a lot of new customers that we have, I think acquire over the pandemic. Some of them actually do know that we’re a bag company, right because the first time they discovered us was through kind of the good publicity we received for our masks. So, so let me take a step back because I think there’s a good story behind this and how, how we got into the mask. You know, I don’t really want to call it a business because really was more of a charity/social project that we started. So kind of rewind things a little bit. And you know, we were in the beginning of the pandemic last year, this was back in January/February last year. You know, we started hearing a lot of noise and getting news from Asia in terms of what’s happening there and starting to see that back then the US government was kind of taking the stand of, well, this is not going to hit the us. This is just going to be another flu or, you know, we’re not going to get impacted. And we, kind of looking at each other as like a, this doesn’t feel small, you know, and to us it felt a little bit like SARS, you know, in terms of what kind of the overall feeling around that. So obviously, starting in March, you know, that’s when the numbers starting to spike, especially where we live in New York City. And, you know, we kind of said, you know, and kind of the world just went into a spin if you may. And we said, look, you know, as a fashion brand and as a global citizen, we didn’t want to just kind of wait and see, right. We, we spoke to a lot of colleagues and someone’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of unknowns. I kind of want to just kind of wait it out and see what happens. And, I’m talking, talking to my team and I mean, it’s my family. I said listen, I’m not that old, but you know, hopefully, you know, this is kind of the only pandemic I see in my lifetime. And I don’t want to wait and see, I wanna join the fight, especially when, when the country is in jeopardy, you know, and, a bit of a chaos. So we actually, you know, reached out to a bunch of nonprofit organizations, we reached out to the State of New York, the City of New York, to a bunch of government officials. Underwhelmingly, I think the feedback we received was hate. The number one thing you can potentially do is provide masks. And this back then didn’t just mask weren’t available. There were N-95s, which a lot of them were reserved for the frontline workers, right? And we say, you know, what, what can we do to provide masks? And, you know, this is a little bit, you know, we, we were in a unique position because very much we are vertically integrated, brand right? So unlike a lot of brands where they work with different factories, we actually own our own factory. We have different factories that we do work with as well from time to time, but primarily you know we have the control of our production in our supply chain. So, you know, I sat down with the board and essentially kind of pivoted a little bit and transformed part of our factory and taking some of our scraps from our luxury handbags to actually make masks. And usually it wasn’t going to be selling to anybody. It was just purely donating to homeless shelters, to essentially people in need, you know, people that didn’t have a lot of PR budget people who maybe don’t have a big voice, but we know for sure that they are in a very close area and need the masks. So we did that. We posted on social media, you know, we have a pretty engaging community on social. So I think for all of our customers saw, that and were like “Hey, we need masks. You know, can we get some, and can you just sell me some?” And, and that was the deciding deciding moment, right? It’s like, okay, what do we do? Do we, do we sell some, do we, do we not? And I think we, we came to conclusion pretty quickly that this is very much needed. So we, we launched a campaign called Caraa Cares which lasted almost a full year where we said for every mask we sell, we match it with our own donation, which is something that we’re pretty proud of. And then off we went. So because we were one of the first fashion brands that kind of took that step. I think we got a lot of love from the press. You know, my goal, I told them that what we’re hoping to do is just inspire other brands, right? Others to step up, don’t sit on the sidelines, find ways to help during this pandemic. So, you know, that’s why I said before, we see it very much as a social program in terms of helping the community where we can. And, and obviously, you know, we have over 150 organizations that we’re able to donate to in the last year. You know, we’re still continuing to do charity work and donations where we can obviously, you know, based on the latest CDC guidelines, I think things have changed a little bit in terms of the mask requirement. We still see there’s a huge need for wearing a mask in certain social settings. So, yeah, so I think, you know, the, the key as a business, the key thing that we walked away from that it’s mainly just building goodwill, showing people that we’re not all about business, but there’s a huge social goodness to our brand, our mission. You know, I think that’s the, that’s the key, key win from the business, or from the brand standpoint,

NY Launch Pod : You identified a problem early on, and then you pivoted your manufacturing. But I think you’re also being a little bit humble because your mask was top rated as super comfortable, it’s lightweight, it got a lot of press around being a very effective mask that people want to wear. What was the ability, based off of your scrap bag fabric, as you described, to be able to transition that and, and that manufacturing process as well. And did it work? What made it so comfortable?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, that was, that was a hard day, man. You know, it was, it was one of those things where, you know, we knew that our fabric that we use for bags had its very unique properties, right, material properties and chemical properties because they were usually designed for bag.

NY Launch Pod: Which is kind of weird, because it’s a bag, right? I mean, who would, who would have thought that a bag fabric works as a face mask?

Aaron Luo: That’s right. You know, what’s interesting though, is bearing in mind, right? The genesis of our brand, Caraa the bag brand, back in 2014-15 when we started it was, it started as a sports bag that can transition with her for inside and outside of the fitness studio. That was the initial genesis behind, you know, the kind of the seed behind the brand itself. What that translated to in terms of product is that our products are very versatile and a lot of them are antibacterial, right? Not all of them have anti-bacterial lining, but few of them do. So, you know, to a certain extent material, technology or material components, if you may has always been on top of mind for us, you know, when it comes to design. So, you know, this wasn’t like, oh, we’re a leather company and now let’s go out there and start popping off fabric. But, but still to your question, you know, it’s, how do we know that these bad fabric can actually work? So it took a lot of tests, you know, very rapid tests. We partner with an international lab to make sure that, you know, everything that we are doing, it’s safe, that it’s protective, and obviously we don’t do any kind of that claim cause it’s very much just a fashion mask, but still, you know, there’s certain things that we want to discover about our fabrics. I think one thing to know too is because we were early into kind of offering the mask. It did allow us to kind of go through a few other variations in a pretty quick manner. So yes, you’re right. The Wall Street Journal you know, in the summer, did call us, you know, the most breathable mask in the world, which is very humble and very awesome at that day because they went through, I think north of 50 masks, 50 brands. But yeah, I think it just took a lot of iteration, rapid iteration. We found some really good partners in terms of the labs that we worked with. So they were stepping up and helping us kind of giving that feedback by the way. So it kind of allowed us to kind of do that iteration after we went through the initial set of scraps cause you know, again, initially it was using our luxury material for scrap. Then, we kind of open up to other mills and other material fabric suppliers that we have a relationship with and started exploring more so later on, if you go to our website, now we have a lot bigger of an assortment, but yeah, I think, you know, being early definitely helped just because it gives us that little time of doing the back and forth iteration testing to make sure that the product is good.

NY Launch Pod: And right now you have velvet masks also?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, you know, the velvet masks we launched a few months ago and I think the use case for masks has changed a little bit, right. It started last year. It was mainly just giving me something that I can protect myself and protect others. That was a new show, kind of the reasons around why people wear a mask. As time went on and you know, we kind of gained more control of the pandemic. I think a lot of customers started saying, “Hey, I love the shape. I love how it feels, but you know, do we have a little something, a little dressier?” So we listened very carefully to our customers as far as like what they want and what they need, you know, velvet and some embellishment mask, you know, there’s some pretty cool embellishment masks that we are launching in the next few weeks that will be really cool. All of that came from customers, you know, just passionate customers that say “Me or my kids love your mask, you know, but you know, there’s a lot of variety out there and you know, do you have anything with confetti on it or with rainbow on it or so and so forth. So, you know, so now we’re opening up to a much bigger variety to kind of accommodate the customer demand.

NY Launch Pod: So you were ranked, as you mentioned, “Wall Street Journal, Top Breathable Mask”. What did that mean for your company because a top mask in the middle of a pandemic and now people may be hearing about your company for the first time?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, it was very humble, you know with a lot of these kinds of organic press, you know, you don’t really know until the day they released the article, there’s no heads up, there’s no nothing. So, you know, for us, it really translated to a lot of customers coming to us, asking for that particular mask that was featured and, you know, allowed us to truthfully create a good relationship with them over time. Right. Cause I mean that the article came out in the summer, you know, we’ve tried to essentially build a long lasting relationship with them after they purchase the mask either with mask product or with back products and just kind of want to continue building that relationship with them. So yes, it was definitely a humbling experience we definitely got, you know, a surge of customers coming in, just because of the credibility that we gained from, you know, an awesome editorial like the Wall Street Journal but I think the hardest part is not the hardest part but the interesting part of that to me, the beauty of all this is that it allows us to create a broader relationship to a community that we didn’t really have access to before.

NY Launch Pod: We talked about how your mask business and charity certainly grew a lot. You started, as we mentioned, as a bag company, what was the bag business like during the pandemic? People are not traveling. You mentioned that in our original podcast, the brand is designed to follow her. So what was happening? People aren’t traveling anymore. So what was that, the bag business like, which is actually your business?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, so for one quarter it was down.

NY Launch Pod: Just one quarter?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, you know, surprisingly, you know, for us we felt so, so a couple of things happened, right? One thing is so definitely for one quarter it was, it was, it was pretty rough, you know, in terms of the demand, they were just, the use cases is no longer there and nobody’s going through the office, nobody going to the gym, nobody’s traveling. So, so that, that demand just kind of disappeared for one quarter. I think internally what we said was two things, right? A. We, you know, took the opportunity to reinvest in some of our operational aspects of our business, whether it’s investing in manufacturing to make sure that our factories are robust for, you know, scaling for the future or, invest in our technology stack, which again, you start seeing that coming up, coming live in the next few months. Cause it does take a little bit of time to implement some of the technology that we selected. So that’s one thing we did. So we actually took the opportunity to say, yes, the revenue is down, the demand is down, but perhaps this is a good breathing room if you may, right to actually take a step back and reinvest in the areas that we think is gonna help us position for scaling once the pandemic… Well we were pretty certain the pandemic will end at one point, right? I mean…

NY Launch Pod: Plus you’re getting all of these customers from the masks.

Aaron Luo: We’re getting customers for the mask. I think, you know for us, in terms of the bags to answer your question directly, I think we purposely started to promote products that are somewhat more relevant to the pandemic. So yes, people are not going to the office, but they’re still taking walks. Right. For example, like hiking and walking and outdoor sport was still very much a thing, especially last summer and fall. So we had a sling bag that is, I mean, it’s a very decked out. We kind of took basically north of 35 fanny packs that was in the market when we designed this and said, like, “Let’s pick everything we love about all that, let’s pick everything that we hate about all that, let’s add our own design spin into it, and then come up with what we think the fanny pack should look like”. And this thing it’s, you know, there’s a couple of sizes, but the large one has 15 pockets. It really it’s a handbag, but actually it looks like a fanny pack. Right. So, you know, that actually did really well for the pandemic. We continue to promote that because, you know, folks are still using fanny packs to go to high, go to the grocery store, you know, cause you, you know, everything needs to be hands-free now, right? People, people don’t want to carry their totes or, or, or their backpack. So I think there are certain products that we starting to put forward a lot heavier than we used to because of the pandemic. So I think, you know, yes, the use cases for a lot of travel commuter bag was definitely down. Are there certain other bags that we kind of looked into and say, can these be useful, right, during the pandemic for the lifestyle that our customers currently have. And there are certain products like the one I mentioned that did.

NY Launch Pod: Well, I love how you talked about how you deck out certain products when you are designing them, whether it’s the fanny pack, the baby bag. You’ve certainly added a line of products as well, wallets, but what is the process like when you are taking an item, the fanny pack, for example, where you get the 35 other fanny packs and then say, “We are going to deck this out”? That to me is just so fascinating where you take something and you want to improve it and you’re doing all this research. What are you discovering to get to that point? And how long does that process take?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, it’s long and treacherous. I think that’s a short…

NY Launch Pod: Treacherous?

Aaron Luo: Well, you know, you don’t get the answer right away, right. It, you know, it’s not, you know, if you look at a lot of the, let’s just call them “traditional brands” or “fast fashion retailers”, you know, you’re under the gun, right? So you have X weeks/a month to come out with a new product, whether you can, or you cannot, you have to come out with a new product. Right. You know, for us, we have the luxury of not always working with a timeline if you may, in all of this. This is a very relevant question that you ask Hal, because every time we sit down and design the new product or reiterate an existing product, because we do a lot of iteration or iteration, of existing products. We always ask, “Why does the world need another fanny pack?”. Right. Why does the world need another backpack? You know, there’s so much clutter in our lives and there’s so much clutter out in the world. Like why do we think this one is going to be different and unique and relevant? You know, I think relevancy it’s, it’s a key thing we keep asking ourselves. So, most of the time, I don’t want to say always, but most of the time, when we launch a new product is we feel that the current existing product are just not good enough. For many reasons, it could be because they’re not really versatile enough that we think that it should be more versatile. So you can be carrying them multiple ways like our studio bag, for example, the whole genesis behind the studio bag, which is the bag that we launched the brand with, it can be worn as a backpack, or as a crossbody, or as a satchel. Right. But gives that, that aspect that can basically transform the bag, depending if you’re biking or hiking or walking or running. So, so that did not exist before. Maybe there were a few bags out there, but you know, we feel that we needed to actually come out with a product that can transform depending on how she went to places. Right. So, so I think we, everything starts there. Everything starts with you identify a need and you ask, “Is there a good solution out there?”. If the answer is yes, there’s a good solution out there, we move on because we don’t want to add to the clutter. Right. But if we feel that there’s an opportunity to improve, or it’s just not good enough, at least from our opinion, then we take the decision to actually develop. And, and that process is very iterative right. I always say that there’s the kind of data-driven aspect of our design and there’s the emotional aspect of design. And obviously Carmen is not here today, but you know, Carmen is our creative director and you know, her design, it’s very unique. I think the way she designs is that we do take a lot of customer feedback, which is kind of the data driving the empirical data aspect of the design. So, we take the feedback from the customers gather data, but then there’s the 50% of the things, which is kind of what I call the magic happens. Right. Where Carmen, from an artistic standpoint, for tastemaking standpoint, infuses kind of her tastemaking, her design, design inspiration, like all of the emotional things that comes with design and infuse that on top of the data. Right. And you know, I always say this the way we like to think about our product is that it, you know, yes, we get customer feedback but when it comes to the actual form of the product, what it looks like, you know, we hope we give you something that you don’t even know that you need it. So that, that’s kind of a little bit of the secret sauce, right? In terms of how we design is that there’s the empirical aspect of it, which we spend a lot of time on and a lot of budget in terms of gathering customer feedback. But also there’s that emotional kind of secret sauce that happens to happen a little bit behind the door that kind of Carmen and her team takes together and kind of layer on top of it.

NY Launch Pod: Certainly, people love the emotion behind your brand, but I’m still fascinated. There are 35 fanny packs, for example, that you talked about, or maybe you had them on a table, why did you say we need 36? Where are you pulling that data? Where are you seeing that problem so that when people are able to connect with it? Because I think that that’s certainly a key to your business because you’re pulling this data out, even for the baby line. I know your baby line’s getting very good reviews, but how are you identifying that problem, particularly when there is a lot of clutter out there?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, I mean, baby bag was a very fun and interesting product to design, right? Because parents are very passionate about their baby products. And, this is especially true for second time mom and dads, because they’ve gone through once already and they know what they loved about all the baby products they used for their first child and they know what they hate. So what that translated to is very passionate feedback. It, you know, so for, for that, for that particular product, you know, you just had to ask three questions and, you know, you hear a ear full, you know, from parents as far as like, well, I don’t like this bag cause it’s just flat out ugly. I don’t like that bag because it’s just heavy. Or I don’t like this bag because the pockets are not right. I mean, you know, we gather tons of empirical data from, from that, that particular design process. So that was easy to a certain extent, right? Because we already knew from all of our customers and influencers and ambassadors, you know, one of the things we need to fix. And so what that translated to is a bag that A. Can work in a couple of different ways. So you can wear as a backpack, you can hide the backpack straps if you don’t want to wear the backpack, whereas a crossbody, it comes with latches that you can cook it to your stroller. So if you are wearing, you know, carrying on the stroller, you can hook it up. The outside of the bag has three major pockets that are thermal proof. So if you are putting hot or cold products in there that can actually keep it in their temperature for a while. The bag comes with a caddy so that if you are actually changing bags, if you may, you can simply take out the caddy in the middle and basically help you get, you know, your bag a lot more organized. None of that existed. I mean, you know, like we, we did a pretty extensive research on this when we first launched the baby bag. When I looked at the baby bags in the market, none of them even came close to kind of the features that we were offering. You have bags that offered piece and components of the things I just talked about, but nothing that basically ruled them all if you may. Right. So, so that, that was, I mean, just to kind of answer your question, that was a good example of, well, clearly there’s a gap in the market, you know, clearly there’s a missing bag that can actually do all that. And by the way, keep it in the reasonable pricing, right. Because yes, we do see some bags that have maybe 80% of what we have, but cost like 400 bucks and, you know, for a baby bag that you might only use it for perhaps a year and a half, two years, you know, do you really want to spend 400 bucks, maybe for some people, but you know, you think twice before you spend that kind of retail cash for it. Right. So, I think that’s the key is to know your customers, ask them the right questions, be humble and listen, you know. Yes, we are a design brand at the end of the day, the end of the day are these on their brands. So we have a very unique point of view when it comes to these anesthetic, but your customers has to be at the center of your, of your product design process.

NY Launch Pod: W hy do you think other brands are not doing what you’re doing with their customers?

Aaron Luo: Yeah, I think some of them are it, you know, some of them are in and you know, I’m not gonna claim that none of them are or…

NY Launch Pod: But the big brands are not, right? I mean, they’re in a product cycle, which you’re talking about, and have the pressure I think, to iterate on, on new products or come up with ways of generating sales. But, my point is that you’re hitting on a niche, you know your customer, and you’re able to become successful whether or not it’s a sling bag, baby bag, wallet, travel. So, why do you think that a lot of the larger brands aren’t doing this?

Aaron Luo: Yeah. I can take a stab at understanding or maybe explaining why. Right. It’s first of all, R and D. So, you know, you’re getting into kind of, what will I call R and D process, right. Of research and development of your products. I think first of all, R and D is expensive, you know, it does take money and time to go through it. And whether you’re a small brand or large brand, you have to ask the question, do you have, or have you allocated enough R and D budget to do what you want to do? I think if we were talking to an engineering company, you know, or a car manufacturer, or, you know, a lot of, kind of also the fashion, you know, the R and D budget, it’s huge, right? Because that’s kind of the viability of their future. But, you know, when you look at a lot of the mass brands, you know, you’d be surprised if you take a look at some of the public ones. If you take a look at the balance sheet or, or their P and L you will be surprised to see, you know, how much they spend on R and D you know, I invite you and your audience to look at it because you’ll be surprised to find what you see. So, so that’s, so that’s the first question it’s, it’s expensive. And we purposely make a decision to invest in R and D because we think that that’s, that’s your moat. And, you know, that’s your barrier against the competition, right? In, in the market, we’re playing, it’s lead, differentiating yourself a product design. Second thing is timeline. And I talked about timeline before, right? We are not on their gun. You know, if I don’t feel like in 2021 or 2022, we have the right mix to launch new product. We’re just not gonna launch new products, you know, we’re going to reiterate existing product, perhaps, but you know, we’re not in the launch for the sake of launching, for the sake of PR, for sake of, you know, pleasing, maybe a department store in large fires, like, “Hey, by the way, it’s a new season. Let me show you a new line sheet.” Right. Cause you know, there’s more stuff coming on. So we’re not under a timeline, which again, it’s a privilege that not all the brands have. Right. You know, if you ask the brands, are you listening to your customer? Everybody will tell you, yes, we’re listening to our customers. Nobody’s gonna say no, we don’t listen to our customers. We’ll do whatever we want. But I think what you really got to ask is what do you do with that? Right. Do you actually translate it to, you know, the R and D aspect of things that we talked about? Do you, how many iterations do you go through? You know, because sure, you could go through kind of getting the customer feedback by the future, go through one iteration. Did you really get that right? What if you don’t get it right? You know? And, when you are in an environment where you are on the gun of deliver, deliver, deliver, and there’s a time clicking, you know, you don’t have the luxury to go through nine iterations, right? It’s like, “Ah, I’m 60% there. Let’s go, launch the product.”. And we write, we, we improve it afterwards, back to my initial point. We want to get it right. We want to be relevant. And we want to be in, you know, different and better than, than what’s out there. So let’s get it right, and then, and then get it out there. So, those are some of the factors I think that goes into why I think a lot of the other brands, I would say that potentially create something that’s a bit more generic perhaps, but overall, I think everybody is listening to their customers it’s what you do with the data and what you do with that, I think that that’s what differentiates you.

NY Launch Pod : And what about getting more accurate data? Some customers may say, “I like your bag. It’s great.” But then how do you pull out more data from them and say, “You know what, actually, what can I do better? But at a certain point, you’re getting ways to make it better. You certainly were able pull out feedback on other items. Let’s say back in that fanny pack. How were you able to make sure that it is the product that you want to release?

Aaron Luo: Yeah. I think it goes back to kind of the ambassador community that you have and the influence of community that we’ve built over time. Right. So yes, you know, you might get a happy customer. That’s how you get, “Your bag is perfect. Don’t change a thing. I love it. I’ll continue to buying it.” But to your point, that data might be a little skewed because the reason that they’re a customer from the start, right, is that they love the product. They bought the product, they love it. Maybe they give a good review already and that’s why we reached out. So a lot of reasons why, you know, why we reached out to existing customers for feedback. By your influencers and your ambassadors, especially the ambassadors that we work with, I mean, they are very passionate about the brand. To a certain extent, they feel protective of the brand, right? Because they feel that they represent the brand. You know, we call them out as much as we can, you know, in our social media, give them features. So they are invested in, in the brand. So our wellbeing ties directly to theirs. So, so they want to see us successful. Right. So even though you have products that might be quote unquote, perfect in the customer’s eyes, our ambassadors will call a nitpick. Now, obviously it’s the brand’s position to determine what to do with that, right. I mean, you know, you, you don’t want to spin the wheels in, in the design because, you know, perfection doesn’t exist in my opinion, when it comes to design, right? There’s always the extra zipper that you can actually add or take away or the extra button that you can change. Right. So I think, you know, ultimately obviously it’s our creative team’s decision to say what to add, what to take away, and what to tweak or not. So there is definitely a judgment call there that we have to make, or you have to make. But I think finding a passionate group of folks, you know, finding that group of passionate people that can give you honest feedback, I think it’s very important.

NY Launch Pod : You obviously couldn’t predict the pandemic when that happened and you pivoted to masks, but what do you think the future holds for Caraa? And what do you want it to hold for Caraa?

Aaron Luo: Yeah. Oh, it’s, it’s a, it’s a loaded question, but, a lot, man, I, you know, I, I think through this experience, it taught us a lot about our customers. Certainly help us to self discover a lot more about ourselves. You know, our mission has not changed, you know, if anything would doubled down on a lot of the things that we initially stand for. So social mission is at the center of what we do. We don’t want to create a brand just to make stuff, right. We want to have a brand that stands for something. So if you look at our social channels, especially for the last 12 months, we’re being a lot more vocal, you know, with social issues, right? So when Black Lives Matter happened, we stood up and, you know, against that social injustice, Stop Asian Hate, company happened, which is obviously very close to, to us because you know, both my co-founder and I we’re Asians, Asian Americans, you know, we, we were very vocal about this, right? When Kamala Harris, you know, our first female vice president was elected office we were very vocal about that. And they say that’s a huge win for our country. And that, that kind of pissed some people off sure you know, when you, when you’re standing up for a social issue, not everybody will agree to your point of view. That’s what democracy is and which we love, but we just feel as a brand, we need to be more vocal. So as I think about kind of the future, that’s one thing that we’re not going to stop doing it. You know, we’re going to continue doing our charity work, you know, started with Caraa Cares with the masks, we’re going to be a lot more vocal and standing for injustices and social issues that we think that are important for our society. When it comes to the product and comes to the brand, I think we are exploring expanding. Certainly, I think, you know, we always going to be heavily focused on handbags and accessories, that’s kind of our bread and butter, that’s what we’re specialized in. And then we’re not going to go away from that. I mean, we, we are the experts in handbag and accessory. That’s kind of where, when you come to us for, but we’re exploring all the categories, a lot of our customers are asking us, why don’t you make luggage? You know, why don’t you make apparel? How about shoes? And, you know, once you, you know, we’re six years in, right? So we’ve had, you know, a pretty robust customer base, we have built a pretty robust customer base until now. And you know, when you have that kind of affinity with your customers, they want more, right. They, they wish they can have a one-stop shop for cool products. If you are a brand that they believe in. So man, the sky’s the limit. I mean, there’s a lot of cool things lined up that we unfortunately can’t disclose yet, but, but there are some where we’re exploring all aspect of growth in terms of scale.

NY Launch Pod: Well, we’re very excited to see your growth. That is a wonderful note to end things on. How do people find out more about what Caraa’s doing, Caraa Cares, and the brand.

Aaron Luo: Yup. So you can find us on Caraasport.com, or Caraa.co, Caraasport.com or Caraa.co. and then we’re very active on Instagram. I mean, that’s kind of the main social channel that we’re currently using to have the two-way dialogue with our customers, right? So that the handle is @Carasport and we’ll welcome all sorts of messages. You know? So if you, whether you have a question about a product, you know, in terms of the measurements or whether it fits, whether it doesn’t, any questions you have, you can reach us on Instagram or send us an email directly through our website or whether they just want to chat and talk about new products that you think we should launch, or you want to talk about any social issues that, that you’re seeing, that we should, we should look into, you know, any, anything and everything. Those are the couple of ways that you can interact with us. And we’d love to hear from you guys.

NY Launch Pod: Aaron wants to hear it all. And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod or visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode, including this one. And, if you’re a super fan of the podcast… Aaron, are you a super fan of the New York Launch Pod?

Aaron Luo: One of my top podcasts, in my repertoire of podcasts I listen to.

NY Launch Pod : Top podcast rated by Aaron. If you’re a super fan like Aaron, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.

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